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Top 10 Self Help Books for Couples in Crisis

Each year there are over 2,000 self-help books published worldwide covering a broad range of topics and many offer to help couples in distress with promises to make their relationships stronger. In the face of so many books it can be difficult to know what might be helpful and effective. Let us help you avoid the guesswork in choosing a good resource for your relationship. Below are the top ten self-help books for couples that we recommend:

Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson

In this book for couples, Canadian attachment therapy pioneer Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson promotes and teaches couples how to re-establish a safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond, a critical feature of EFT. She focuses on key moments in a relationship—from “Recognizing the Demon Dialogue” to “Revisiting a Rocky Moment”—and uses them as touch points for “seven healing conversations”. This highly acclaimed resource teaches couples how to nurture their relationships through case studies, advice and practical exercises.

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman

This resource for couples is based on the idea that partners’ challenges often come about because they speak different “love languages, or choose distinct ways to express love that can be misunderstood and lead to significant relationship difficulties. Chapman describes “quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch” as the five basic love languages and guides couples towards a better understanding of their unique languages of love. This book promises to teach couples to speak and understand each other’s love language, to express and feel love and learn skillful communication.

Divorce Busting: A Step-by-Step Approach to Making Your Marriage Loving Again by Michele Weiner-Davis

In this foundational self-help book Michele Weiner-Davis offers down-to-earth, effective advice to couples who are working together and to individuals attempting unilaterally to save a troubled marriage. Weiner-Davis has a uniquely optimistic, pragmatic and accessible way of addressing couple interactions that invites couples to shift their relationship in a positive direction, step-by-step without necessitating drawn out explorations of hurts and unresolved issues from the past.

Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix

Divided into three sections, this book covers “The Unconscious Marriage,” which details a marriage in which the remaining desires and behavior of childhood interfere with the current relationship; “The Conscious Marriage,” which shows a marriage that fulfils those childhood needs in a positive manner. This book features a 10-week “course” in relationship therapy, and provides exercises for couples to change their interactional patterns. This book is praised for offering valuable information, interesting case studies and helpful exercises.

Rekindling Desire: A Step-by-Step Program to Help Low-Sex and No-Sex Marriages by Barry McCarthy & Emily McCarthy

This resource is a comprehensive, thoughtful, un-gimmicky guide and roadmap to the many, low and no sex couples who are seeking to change their relationship. The discussions and cases included in this book have depth, and readers struggling with the problem of a low sex relationship will find themselves reflected in its pages. A major strength of this book is the inclusion of concrete suggestions to couples for rethinking, reframing, and constructively talking to each other about this important, joint problem. This book also challenges long-held myths that can sabotage a couple’s chance to reconnect sexually.

Getting Past the Affair: A Program to Help You Cope, Heal, and Move On — Together or Apart by Donald Baucom & Kirstina Coop Gordon

Discovering that a partner has been unfaithful can be devastating for an individual and a relationship. Whether couples want to end the relationship or piece things back together, Getting Past the Affair offers guidance through the initial trauma so that couples can understand what happened and why before deciding how to move forward. This compassionate book offers support and sound advice from a team of award-winning couple therapists and includes realistic tips for rebuilding relationships and restoring trust.

This book is focussed on divorce prevention through encouraging couples to adopt good listening and communication skills and developing ways to manage conflict effectively. The book offers hope to couples stuck in unhelpful ways of communicating and illuminates patterns of interactions that are predictive of divorce and how to address these, as well as advice about how to avoid problematic communication and successfully deal with conflict.

Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive In Committed Relationships by David Schnarch

This pioneering book explores the ways couples can keep passion alive and reach high levels of sexual and emotional fulfillment later in life. Acclaimed psychologist David Schnarch guides couples toward greater intimacy with techniques developed in his clinical practice and worldwide workshops. This resource offers tools for increasing connectedness and for keeping sexual sparks alive and offers techniques for overcoming sexual and emotional problems. This book has helped many couples invigorate their relationships and reach the fullest potential in their love lives.

Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver.

In Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Gottman and Silver shatter common myths about divorce and share what is important to have a happy marriage, information based on Gottman’s years of research. This book provides helpful information, danger signs to look for and address in couple relationships and offers an important wake up call to couples wanting sound and tested advice as well as guidelines for communication and behaviour.

In this groundbreaking book, internationally acclaimed family therapist Constance Ahrons defines “the good divorce” and shows how couples can achieve one. This book challenges the notion that divorce inevitably turns adults into bitter enemies, results in damaged children and broken homes. Dr. Ahrons focuses on what divorcing couples can learn from those families that maintain family bonds and continue to meet the needs of their children. This is a hopeful, practical book that is neither pro-divorce nor anti-marriage that underscores the need for society, professionals and families to: remove the stigma of divorce, redefine the divorced family as “binuclear”, help parent and children to establish new roles, rules and rituals to support the new family structure, and learn parenting strategies that facilitate rather than hinder healthy development.